Sans Direction
by Shaitanah
Summary: Sakura wants to know what loneliness tastes like. Kakashi can’t help wondering why she’s chosen him. It’s funny how a few days can change lives. Kakashi/Sakura Please R&R!


**Title**: "Sans Direction"

**Author**: Shaitanah

**Rating**: PG

**Timeline**: post-Shippuuden

**Summary**: Sakura wants to know what loneliness tastes like. Kakashi can't help wondering why she's chosen him. It's funny how a few days can change lives. Kakashi/Sakura Please R&R!

**Disclaimer**: _Naruto _belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Title from _Ramène Moi_ by San.Drine. This song has been an immense inspiration while writing this story.

**Dedication**: for my dear friend Marilena, a belated birthday gift. I hope you love it, darling! It was unimaginably hard to write!

* * *

**SANS DIRECTION**

_But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel._

_You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves._

_Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,_

_ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything._

Pablo Neruda. _'Almost Out Of The Sky'_

* * *

She could see the blooming cherry trees out of his window. She had never noticed it before. But then again, she couldn't remember if she had ever been at his place.

It was a typical loner's apartment, very masculine and spartan. It was quite noticeable that he didn't spend much time there. It was clean and neat, walls lined with bookcases; the first time she came, their content was piled on the floor, and Kakashi was standing in the middle of the room, eyeing the books with a strange look which she would describe as a mixture of hopelessness and critique.

Sakura giggled in spite of herself. He looked up; his open eye curved slightly. She couldn't help but notice that he looked nice in informal clothes. Kind of domestic. His silvery hair, unrestrained by the headband, stuck up even more wildly. The Sharingan eye was squeezed shut, and a pale scarlet scar of many years old crossed it roughly.

"This place could use some make-over," she remarked, and her cheeks flushed.

"Yo!" he said, and she realized with a start that she hadn't said hello. It felt almost like breaking and entering, and she blushed even harder.

Her gaze drifted over the pile of books, most of them in flashy covers, and she knew immediately what kind of books they were.

"My library's gotten a little too hard to manage," Kakashi explained nonchalantly. "I thought I'd re-arrange it a little. But it turned out to be not quite that easy."

"I can help!" Sakura blurted out and reached for a bright-yellow book on top of the pile. Kakashi chuckled tentatively.

"Ah… I don't think you should open it."

Sakura already opened the curious books which screamed 'forbidden' with its very colour. She looked up at her sensei and smiled with soft reproach, the corners of her lips barely twitching upwards.

"I'm not five! I find them only mildly insulting, and my eyes won't burn out."

He chuckled again as she read a few passages. He watched her and he wondered if she knew how she wrinkled her nose whenever a particularly detailed description came up; and she wondered if he had noticed this little habit of hers.

Sakura looked away from the book, glanced at Kakashi and snapped the book closed. It felt awkward to stand in his quarters uninvited, reading porn in his presence. He probably felt strange too. He shrugged casually when she squatted by the books and began to rummage through them.

"Don't you have somewhere else to go?"

She blinked at him. "I… I can leave if you want me to."

He didn't answer. Instead, he squatted beside her and started sorting the books out.

* * *

Wind danced over the tree tops and scattered pale cherry blossoms all around. The petals swayed in the air and fell over the dusty road, and it looked like a choppy pinkish sea.

Sakura wondered what he was thinking about when he looked out of the window.

Then she wondered if he had time to look out at all.

She ultimately decided against it.

"You know, you don't have to make up a reason to see me if you have something to talk about," Kakashi stated when he found her standing by his door, her fist in the air, ready to knock. He carried a huge paper bag from a grocery store; a small smile was clearly outlined behind his close-fitting mask.

"I have nothing to talk about," Sakura admitted bashfully.

Kakashi nodded curtly, opened the door and let her in. He put the bag on the kitchen table and wandered off into the depths of the apartment. Sakura rubbed her hands together incoherently, feeling out of place in the empty kitchen. When Kakashi returned, he found her sorting out his groceries. He surveyed her attentively and finally asked in a quiet voice:

"What about Sai and Naruto?"

She considered his question for a few minutes and decided they were fine without her. After all, Naruto was still majorly depressed and didn't even bother hiding it (which scared the hell out of her; she was painfully unaccustomed to that kind of Naruto) and Sai was probably stuck in the library, occupied with his usual 'friend-making' problems.

She waved dismissively and went back to the duty at hand.

Half an hour later she was sitting on the window-sill, her back on the cherry trees, and watching him continue organizing the books. A few shelves were already full. Others required some dusting off before being filled with books.

She spotted two photographs on his night-stand. One looked familiar; she had one herself and she looked at it every day before going to bed, praying her childhood would come back to her and her heart would be whole again; praying the prodigal would return and Naruto would find peace.

The other one was different, though it looked familiar too. It was a regular four-man squad, captained by the Fourth (known as the Yellow Flash of Konoha at that time). Sakura smiled softly: young Kakashi was wearing a mask as well; a pair of heavy-lidded dark eyes looked at her as if appraisingly. There was a girl with light-brown hair and a boy wearing ski glasses next to him. Sunlight streamed down on them from the azure sky, gleaming like gold in the Yondaime's hair. The boy next to Kakashi twirled a chopstick between his lips.

Sakura scrutinized the photo with vague interest. The time seemed to stop. She felt like she knew those faces even though she didn't. But it was the same blue sky above the Hidden Leaf Village, the same verdurous bushes behind the team, the same silver-haired man – if only a boy at that time. And the same feeling of longing and home.

"It's good that you warmed up to Naruto after all," Kakashi uttered all of a sudden.

Sakura's eyes darted upwards. She failed to notice when he had risen from the floor and leaned against the wall by her side.

"I didn't–."

"It is incredibly easy to lose someone," Kakashi went on. "Her name was Rin." He must have been aware of how warm his voice sounded when he uttered her name. He added before Sakura had the wrong impression about it: "No, I wasn't in love with her."

* * *

The next day she went for a walk with Ino. She wondered how much Ino actually knew about her sensei… _before_. Ino preferred not to talk about it, though for her the blow wasn't as hard as it was for Shikamaru.

Sakura passed by the monument on her way to the training grounds. Kakashi was there. He was always there when he had nothing more important to do. It was much easier to find him there than in his apartment.

She didn't stop there and didn't start a conversation. She felt that she had already used up all her chances with him.

At the training ground boys were playing football. This was where Sakura was reunited with Ino who took another route, and together they sat on the grass, watching the game. Sakura noted with satisfaction that Naruto was out there as well.

"You spend an awful lot of time with Kakashi-sensei," Ino remarked quietly. "People talk."

"No, you talk," Sakura laughed dismissively. "Because you have this obsessive idea that I need to get a life?"

"Heh, don't you?"

Naruto's team won. Because they had Shikamaru, Ino stated proudly. Sakura watched her friend from the corner of her eye. Shikamaru could beat anyone, Ino said with painstaking confidence. Sakura felt happy; she knew Ino was not as superficial as she liked to present herself. Finally Ino had faith to put in her teammates.

When the match was over Sakura came across Kakashi again. He lay sprawled on a thick branch of a tree not far from the quarters, reading his customary book. Sakura halted by the tree and looked up at him.

"It's been kind of boring these days, hasn't it?" Kakashi asked, never looking away from the page.

"Yeah, it has," Sakura answered thoughtfully. She rubbed her knees incoherently; grass had smeared them with pale green. "Never found those intervals boring before."

"Neither did I."

It started raining. Not drop by drop, increasing gradually, like she was used to. It poured all at once – and so hard that she was soaked within a few minutes. Kakashi hopped down from the tree and shook his head, his one visible eye sparkling with laughter.

Sakura's hair clung in bleared pink strands to her cheeks. She shivered when Kakashi's fingers brushed against her skin. He swept the pink lock off; it looked unnaturally bright against his gloved hand.

Maybe it was the rain. The melancholy. The longing.

"Have you ever been in love?" Sakura asked quietly.

"Absolutely." The reply, though delayed for a few startling minutes, sounded nonchalant. She hoped she hadn't insulted him or something. "I am now."

"I wonder if I have," Sakura mused.

"I'm not the right person to discuss such things with, I'm afraid." He sounded like a seasoned soldier when he said that. Then his mask stretched as he smiled. "There are a few useful things about reading porn, you know. It mostly tells you what you can confuse with love."

Sakura's lips twitched indignantly. She was about to tell him how indecent that was when realization hit her: he was just making fun of her. She punched his elbow mildly with her fist and laughed.

The rain carried on.

* * *

The next day she came when he was asleep. She had rarely seen him sleep (as if he didn't have the need to succumb to this very human weakness). He lay on the bed, his book resting on his chest, a few pages crammed. His hand hung lax from the bed, fingers brushing the floor.

Sakura looked at him for a moment, then climbed onto the bed and sat over him. He opened his eye; he must have woken up as soon as she entered the room.

"I always loathed it in me," she said as she leaned into him, making sure he could see nothing but her face. Being so inexcusably close to him was by all means… _different_. "The fact that I was so different from you. Sasuke-kun once told me that I didn't know what true loneliness was. And then he left." She swallowed nervously. "And so did Naruto. I thought I knew it then. But I still don't know."

She cupped his face gently with her hands, feeling the smooth fabric of the mask beneath her fingers. She wanted to stop rationalizing because if she didn't, fear would engulf her. She wanted to feel romantic and special.

"You all know what it feels like to lose," she whispered. "I want to know what loneliness tastes like." She began to pull the mask down and squeezed her eyes shut before his face came into full view. "I promise I won't peek."

She brushed her lips against his slowly. She didn't exactly feel anything. No electricity, no heat rising through her body. Darkness closed in on her. Kakashi took her by the elbow; she mentally prepared herself for a lecture. Instead, he pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. She answered, trying to savour the taste she couldn't really define. It was clean, pungent, a little like peppermint, but more like something else.

But she judged it was not loneliness. At least not the one she expected to taste. This was cool like melted mint ice-cream with a touch of dango sweetness.

She could tell he was wondering why she had chosen him. Maybe he reminded her of Sasuke. Maybe he was just… _there_, and anybody else was not.

Sakura pulled away, her eyes still shut, and turned around.

"You're afraid to show people your face," she whispered, "because you think it just may not be yours."

…_Am I right?_ she would have asked. But she knew better than that.

* * *

The next day she didn't see him, and it felt like a jigsaw puzzle that lacked one piece. Sakura was drowning in an intoxicating mix of emotions. She spent the whole day training the new medical jutsu Tsunade-sama had worked out for her and at the end of the day she was so exhausted she barely made it to bed.

But the day after that she went to Kakashi's place again. She stood in front of his door, fighting doubts. His voice snapped her out of her reverie. He called out to her to tell her he knew she was there (who would have thought, eh?), and that she was welcome to come in (her heart fluttered, and she hated it), and that the door…

Now, that one came a little too late. Sakura pressed her hand to the door-knob to push the door open; it came away smeared with fresh metallic-grey paint. She yelped uncontrollably.

Kakashi met her in the hall, laughing heartily. Sakura glared at him in comic frustration and attempted to wipe her hand against his vest.

"He-ey, I did try to warn you!" Kakashi chuckled perkily.

"What's with all this anyway?" Sakura asked on her way to the bathroom.

"Ah… A little bird told me this place could use a renewal. I thought I'd have the door painted grey. I always wanted a grey door."

The paint didn't come off easily. Sakura rubbed her palm with a rough sponge, and still there were a few pearly stains left. On her way out she surveyed the re-organized book-shelves and nodded in approval.

"Looks great."

"Are you aware that we have a mission tomorrow?"

Sakura sighed. Tsunade-sama had told her the day before. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about it. It would make a nice change, though, and Naruto would probably be glad to get out of Konoha for a while.

"It's a small village in the Snow Country," Kakashi elaborated.

Sakura grinned. "Lovely! And I have a huge stain on my favourite sweater."

The laughter died down, leaving the sort of tingly silence hanging thickly between them. Sakura cast her eyes down. 'I'd better go pack,' she told herself. Packing sounded like a task boring enough to distract her from all that instability that took place in her life.

"Sakura," Kakashi called her. She halted on the doorstep, waiting for him to go on. "There's nothing wrong with being normal." She looked at him. A soft smile crossed her lips. "Or being in love."

She closed her eyes and slowly counted his footsteps as he walked towards her. True…

_April, 2008_


End file.
